They call it “the nuclear option.” The term refers to the
proposal to change those rules of the Senate allowing 40 of 100 members to
determine whether legislation is enacted or critical appointees confirmed. Both
parties have used and abused the filibuster over the years by to nullify
elections and to ignore the clear will of a majority of Americans.
Changing that rule should not be termed “the nuclear
option.” It’s “the democratic option.” Senators who are often elected by a slim
majority of not much more than 50% use an anachronistic rule to require 60% of
the senate to tear down political roadblocks to doing the people’s business.
The filibuster is an equal opportunity, bipartisan affront
to democracy. According to USA Today, members of both parties have set
filibuster records.
Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Democrat, who later
switched parties set
the record with a 24 hours, 18 minute filibuster against the Civil Rights Act
of 1957. New Your Republican Alfonse
D'Amato used 23 hours, 30 minutes of the people’s time to protest an
amendment to a defense bill that would have blocked funding for a jet fighter
built in his state.
Wayne
Morse, a Democrat who entered the Senate as a Republican, talked for 22 hours,
26 minutes against a bill giving states control over oil leases. Wisconsin
Republican Robert LaFollette
halted efforts to allow the U.S. Treasury to lend money to banks during the
fiscal crisis of 1908 by filibustering for 18 hours, 23 minutes. William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat occupied
the floor for 16 hours, 12 minutes in 1981, giving a speech against
raising the nation's debt limit.
The
current Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who now leads the way to limit the
filibuster, is not without sin. He used the procedure when the Republicans had
the majority in 2003, talking for more than eight hours to stop some of George
Bush’s judicial nominees.
But
the case is clear that the abuses of the last few years are without precedent. One
half of all filibusters used by the minority to block judicial appointments in
the entire history of the United States have come during the four-and-a-half
years of Barack Obama’s administration.
But
when both parties point fingers at one another to prove each wrongfully used
the filibuster when it served their interests, they are simply demonstrating
how much the rule needs changed. Regardless of which party holds the majority,
elections have consequences. In a democracy, the majority rules.
The fact
is that in many ways, the US Senate has always been a decidedly undemocratic
institution. While members of the US House of representatives and both houses
of every state legislature are required by the US Constitution to be elected on
the basis of population, the Senate was established as a means of circumventing
the popular will. The 38 million Californians have the same number of senators
as the half a million people who live in Wyoming.
Senators
serve six-year terms as opposed to two-year house terms, further removing
senators from accountability to voters. They have to have celebrated more
birthdays, and have more years as US citizens than house members. They alone
confirm cabinet and court appointees, and ratify treaties.
But those
rules, which have effectively created an American “House of Lords,” are in the
Constitution. The filibuster isn’t.
Doubters
should consider James Madison’s
views about creating super-majority requirements. "[Requiring a
supermajority] would mean,” Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers No. 58, “the
fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no
longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the
minority."
The
day will come when Democrats will wish they still had the filibuster to stop a
Republican president’s judicial appointments. The new rule didn’t go far enough
and should have included votes on legislation as well as appointments. Even so,
if it’s any longer possible in America to view anything through non-partisan
eyes, this reform is long overdue for the good of the nation.
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